“Our generation is living in a period when remarkable changes are taking place almost everywhere throughout the world,” writes Professor L. Berg, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. “‘Certainly these widely distributed phenomena cannot be due to the action of the Gulf Stream, which, however, naturally receives its share of the greater general warmth.” The slow thawing of the Arctic is given as a partial explanation for the record voyages of Soviet ice-breakers to northern latitudes, which have never before been reached by navigating vessels. The Sadko in 1935, in ice- free water of the North Kara Sea, steamed to 82 degrees, 42 minutes of northern latitude—an all-time record.

22 Responses to 1935 : Russian Ship Sailed 500 Miles From The North Pole In Ice-Free Water

“By September 2007 the North Pole had been visited 66 times by different surface ships: 54 times by Soviet and Russian icebreakers, 4 times by Swedish Oden, 3 times by German RV Polarstern, 3 times by USCGC Healy and USCGC Polar Sea, and once by CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent and by Norwegian Vidar Viking.”

If you continue reading the article, it becomes clear that 82 degrees 42 minutes is a typo. It should be 81, not 82 degrees north. The very next paragraph states:

“The Yermak, which at the opening of the century was unable even to penetrate the fringe of ice fields jamming the South Kara Sea, last year sailed northward into the Laptev Sea, turning back only after it had exceeded the Sadko mark by twenty-four nautical miles at 82 degrees, 6 minutes.”

It obviously makes no sense that the Yermak was further south and further north than the Sadko at the same time, and the distance between 81 degrees 42 minutes and 82 degrees six minutes IS, in fact, 24 nautical miles. Therefore the Sadko must have only reached 81 degrees 46 minutes north, not the 82 degrees 42 minutes reported in the article.

It’s peculiar how many people now wish to reject historical evidence. Maybe the Roman Empire didn’t exist… After all, we only have scant historical records, a little bit of archaeology, and no scientific measurements at all… Can we really believe the claims of a few ‘primitives’ ?

You do realize that you are arguing for the deletion of EVERYTHING informational provided by the USSR? They had no subs, no nukes, no people, no landmass, no… climate.

By your reasoning, the (proven) instances of manipulation of information by the USA should serve to utterly invalidate everything everyone American has ever done. Ditto for the UK, the European nations, China, etc. etc.

As strongly anti-science as I am, what you are suggesting is deeply stupid.

This kind of nonsense is a typical (hippie) debate-trick: the idea is to place irrational burdens of proof on the opponent. It is related to the ‘have you stopped beating your wife’ gambit. THIS is why it is completely pointless to try and reason with hippies – you CANNOT reason with a liar… because they are corrupt.

There seems to be an interesting anachronism in this argument. Soviet disinformation always had a political aim. In the 30’s there was no political angle to finding open sea in the far north; it would never even have occurred to anyone to look at it in those terms. (These people weren’t extolling the achievements of Soviet ice-breakers; they were just reporting that they had been able to travel farther north than earlier years in open seas.)

It’s only in the present day that a report like this has a political/social context, due to the AGW debate. There was no such context then.

..and before you start bitching about “models”, note that the volume collapse was very recently verified by comparing CryoSat-2 vs. ICESat. This is a massive change and it’s real…but of course AGW could not have been the cause, LOL.